How had it come to this? How could a marriage formed with such passion and joy disintegrate into such bitterness?
Movement caught her attention and she removed her headphones and straightened as the head stewardess approached to see if she would like anything.
‘A blanket would be nice, thanks,’ she replied. The air-conditioning on Massimo’s jet was always set to freezing.
The blanket delivered, Livia was suddenly struck by the cabin’s silence.
Lowering her partition, she looked across at Massimo.
He’d fallen asleep.
His laptop was still open but the man himself was fast asleep, upright in his seat, his mouth slightly open as he breathed in and out heavily.
A tightness formed in her chest as she watched until, without thinking, she got to her feet and padded over to him.
For a long time, hardly daring to breathe, she drank in the features of the man she had once loved so much. His Fijian ancestry was stronger in him than in his sister. His skin was a deep olive, his thick hair the most beautiful shade of ebony. She’d liked it when he forgot to cut it, and had spent many happy hours snuggled on the sofa with him, Massimo talking, his head on her lap, Livia content to simply listen to his wonderful rich, deep voice and run her fingers through his hair. It was the closest to peace she had ever felt in her life.
She’d tried so hard to hold onto what they had but he had slipped away from her with the same ease her fingers had run through his hair.
Her throat closed, Livia carefully draped the blanket she’d been about to use for herself on his lap. She wanted to press the button that would tilt the chair back and turn it into a bed but was afraid the motion would wake him. Struck again by the dark circles around his eyes, she wondered when he’d last had a decent night’s sleep. Or the last time he’d had a decent meal.
The compulsion to reach out her hand and stroke her fingers over his high cheekbones, to feel the texture of his skin on hers, to run her fingers through his hair…it all hit her so fast that her hand was inches from his face before she realised what she was about to do and stopped herself.
Her heart thumped wildly and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.
Putting her hand to her chest, she backed away, afraid to be this close to him.
Afraid of what it did to her.
Massimo’s eyes opened with a start.
He blinked rapidly, disorientated.
His laptop was still open but had put itself into sleep mode.
Had he fallen asleep?
Getting to his feet to stretch his legs, he felt a sudden chill on his thighs and gazed down in astonishment at the blanket that had fallen to the floor.
Where had that come from?
He stared over at Livia. Her partition was still up but, standing, he could see her clearly. She’d reclined her chair and was watching something on the television with her headphones in. A blanket covered her whole body up to her chin.
‘Did you put a blanket on me?’ He didn’t mean to sound so accusatory but the thought of her doing that…
Her face turned towards him and she pulled the headphones off. ‘Did you say something?’
Before he could answer one of the cabin crew entered. ‘We will be landing in twenty minutes.’
The moment they were alone again, Massimo turned back to Livia. ‘How long was I asleep?’
She shrugged.
He swore under his breath. He hadn’t finished his analysis. Damn it, he’d promised the project manager that he would have it in his inbox before he reached the office that morning.
He bit back the demand he wanted to throw at her as to why she hadn’t woken him and sat back down.
Livia had put the blanket on him. He knew that with a deep certainty and he didn’t know if it was that simple gesture or that he was now behind on where he needed to be workwise that made his guts feel as if acid had been poured in them.
He felt close to snapping. Virulent emotions were coursing through him and his wife, the cause of all his angst, was reclined in her seat as nonchalant as could be.
But knowing her as well as he did, he knew her nonchalance was a sham. Livia did not do nonchalance.
Why had she put a blanket on him?
His eyes were better able to focus after his short sleep but, with their landing imminent, he put his laptop away and folded his desk up and secured it, all the while hating that he was fully aware of Livia sorting her own seating area out, avoiding looking at him as much as he avoided looking at her.
Los Angeles couldn’t come soon enough.
Not another word was exchanged until the plane had landed safely.
Needing to escape the strange febrile atmosphere that seemed to have infected his flight crew as much as them, Massimo grabbed his laptop and got to his feet but the moment he left his seat, Livia was there facing him in the aisle, holding her bag tightly, clearly ready to make her own escape.
He stepped to one side to let her pass but she stepped to the same side too.
Their eyes met. Their gaze held, only momentarily, but long enough for him to see the pain she had become a master at hiding from him.
A sharp compression lanced his chest, as if his heart had become a rose in full bloom, its thorns spearing into him.
And then she blinked, cast her gaze to the floor, murmured, ‘Excuse me,’ and brushed past him.
Massimo swallowed away the lump in his throat and left his plane by the other exit.
TWO HOURS AFTER landing in Los Angeles, they were cleared to take off for the second leg of their mammoth journey to Fiji.
Livia had returned to the plane before Massimo. She guessed he’d gone to the private executive lounge in the airport to work. She’d taken herself for a walk, keeping her phone in her hand for the alert that the plane had refuelled and she could get back on, and tried to get hold of Gianluca, her youngest sibling. He hadn’t answered and hadn’t called her back either. She’d had no wish to go sightseeing or do any of the things most visitors with a short layover at LAX would do. Just breathing the air brought back the awful feelings that had lived in her the last dying months of their marriage.
She hated Los Angeles. She hated California. She’d loathed living there. For a place known as the Golden State, her life there had been devoid of sunshine.
At first, she’d enjoyed the novelty of it all. Compared to Naples and Rome it was huge. Everything was so much bigger. Even the sky and the sun that shone in it appeared greater and brighter. But then loneliness had seeped its way in. She had no friends there and no means to make them. Unlike Massimo, who spoke fluent English, her own English was barely passable. The glass home they’d shared was forty kilometres from downtown LA. An intensely private man, Massimo had deliberately chosen a home far from prying eyes. There were no neighbours. The household staff spoke only English and Spanish.
She’d become sick with longing for home.
Massimo hadn’t understood. He hadn’t even tried.
But there hadn’t been any sunshine since she’d left him and returned to her home in Italy either.
It was strange